Trevor Noah: The Racist, Soho Theatre, review

Dominic Cavendish is impressed by the laid-back assurance of South
African comic Trevor Noah.

According to the BBC weather forecast, the peak temperature for Johannesburg over the next few days is likely to reach 29 degrees. Contrast that with highs in shivering London of a miserable three degrees Celsius, and you have to ask why anyone in their right mind hailing from that part of South Africa would choose to pitch camp over here at the grimmest time of year.

It’s a question that Trevor Noah, one of the country’s hottest exports - brought over to the Edinburgh Fringe last year by Eddie Izzard and now enjoying a sell-out run at the Soho theatre - asks impertinently straight off.

Combining boyish good-looks with an air of laid-back assurance and softly spoken thoughtfulness, he puzzles at our sunshine deficit and wonders at our staying power. “Why would anybody live here, if you had a choice? There is no sun in the UK,” he continues. “That’s why there’s no hope here!” We shouldn’t even call it the weather, he advises. “The word 'weather' implies change.”

For a moment you begin to wonder whether you’re putting up with some of the most uncomfortable seating in London (great “cabaret” ambience they’ve got here, but what a crush), only to be the butt of the joke. Then Noah, 28, warms to his main theme, racial identity, and it’s his equal, fearless frankness on the subject that makes him as health-giving as a winter break.

The son of a Xhosa mother and a Swiss father, a child of apartheid and a rare mixed-race phenomenon in the Soweto township where he grew up, Noah was, he says, “born a crime”.

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This is the source of many amused recollections for him - he had to walk on the opposite side of the road to his dad, for instance, and he avoided getting hit by his grandmother because he bruised more visibly. It also makes him ideally placed to scorn our current climate of political correctness.

Racism, he mock-complains: “They don’t make it like that anymore… No dogs, no tear-gas.” He’s baffled at the way “black” has been replaced by the euphemism “urban” and hates the right-on phrase “I don‘t see colour”. We should all lighten up, he reckons.

Rare is the comic who can unite a diverse audience in laughter while making potentially divisive comments. The only pity is that his show is so short. He should come back later and play to far more people for longer. You never know, our washout weather system might even come up trumps for a change, too.